chapter two
〈 ♞ 〉NIGHT CIRCUS15 NOVEMBER 2014
4:23 AM
4:23 AM
THE SECOND CHAPTER
Jiwool pants as she and Jaesun finally stop dancing, practicing until four in the morning into Saturday just trying to get the basis of the choreography down. According to Minseok, both of them needed to get the basics down as soon as possible so they can start working on the more complicated moves he’s thinking of adding to the dance, so they’ve been practicing nonstop between recording their title song and eating to keep their strengths up.
She frowns as she walks over to get her water bottle as Jaesun finally turns off the music. “Do you think we have it down?” she questions, completely out of breath as she watches her partner go for his bag as well to get his own water.
“I think as much as we can without the actual recording finished yet,” Jaesun responds back with a huff.
She nods as she looks around to see that it’s only the two of them left, Suhwan and Sookhyun leaving with the instructors two hours ago to make it home safely while Seungheon left an hour ago to go meet up with his cousin somewhere else entirely. But there are two bags left, and she was pretty sure Min left hours ago as well with Seungheon. “Aren’t we getting the demo later today?”
“Yeah,” Jaesun hums out.
When Jiwool looks over to him, she sees him staring at the two leftover bags as well. She sighs as she picks out her cell phone and is surprised to only see one missed call and two text messages from Kim Junmyeon. She frowns in confusion as she opens the text messages to see the words ‘I’m sorry’ and ‘Woolie-yah…’ The dumb nickname the man created for her makes her worry more about him.
She’s heard of the rumors about his father being a part of that pro-Japanese group, but it just didn’t make sense. For as long as she’s known Junmyeon, or well, Suho, which has been about four years or more now, she’s never known the man or his son to be anything in relation to that. Sure, they’ve never delved into the topic extensively, but all she knows about Junmyeon’s actions and interests involves collecting a bunch of manga and claiming to read ‘a bunch of novels’ because of it.
The sudden memory has her smiling the littlest bit until she actually remembers why she’s been avoiding the man for as long as she has. She lets out a little sigh before opening up her other two text messages from Chanyeol reading ‘we’re in japan, yooji!!!’ and ‘yooojiiiii how can you be asleep when we’re having a concert and you’re not even hereeee.’
“So,” Jaesun suddenly states and it causes Jiwool to jump at the abrupt sound, “Either it’s Chanyeol making you smile or the man you’ve been trying to avoid all throughout practice the last few days.”
Jiwool laughs at his choices, giving him a look before returning back to her phone and deciding whether to send a reply or not. It is 4:30 in the morning. “It’s Chanyeol,” she responds back with a smile, deciding against sending a text just so her best friend can sleep all he can if he is asleep right now.
“Ah,” Jaesun breathes out, smiling with her as he grabs his bag and gestures for her to do the same, “Come on. Text him when you get home. We’ve already stayed long enough and we have to be back in a couple of hours.”
“You’re right,” Jiwool answers back, slinging her own bag onto her shoulder and putting her cell phone in her pocket, “But what about Min’s and Hyemi’s stuff?”
“We’ll see what they’ve been doing all this time,” Jaesun says, turning off the lights to the practice room before walking the few feet to see Min practicing her rapping through the door with Hyemi monitoring her. He frowns, looking to Jiwool who’s looking just the same as he.
“Is it because she doesn’t want to go home again?” Jiwool questions quietly, watching as Min finishes and Hyemi pushes on the button for the intercom to talk to her in the recording room. They both look tired too.
“Isn’t it hard for you too?” Jaesun asks back, returning to just watching their friends through the glass window, “I never knew any of the EXO guys personally.”
Jiwool smiles sadly as she suddenly shoves Jaesun’s shoulder to get him to open the door and tell their friends to get going home. The unexpected action makes Jaesun trip and smack himself against the door, groaning when pain blossoms on his cheek. “It’s why I dance so hard and so late,” she replies just as Hyemi jumps in her seat and causes Min to jump in shock at the sudden loud screech that enters her ears at the noise.
“Jiwool,” Jaesun warns, gaining his balance again before turning to glare at her, “Are you trying to annoy me right now?”
“I don’t know,” Jiwool cheekily answers back, “Am I?”
Jaesun simply rolls his eyes before turning to wave at his friends inside the room. He gets two waves back before he opens the door to see what they’re up to. Behind him, Jiwool just smiles politely at Hyemi, following in Jaesun until she accidentally hits the doorknob with her side. She yelps at the sudden pain, stopping in her tracks to rub her side furtively.
“Are you okay?” Min questions as she rushes out of the room to her, “You have to be more careful, Jiwool.”
“Yeah, I know,” Jiwool mumbles back as she winces at the tenderness of the injury.
“What are you guys still doing here?” Jaesun asks, knowing Jiwool always has a tendency to be clumsy outside of the dance room, “You two should get home too. It’s going to be five soon and we need to be back here at eight to go over more of the choreography and work on the next song.”
“We were just practicing our title track,” Hyemi answers back, looking to Min briefly, “She wanted some help so I was helping her get the hang of the intro better.”
“But Jiho said you were already good at it, Min,” Jiwool says, looking to her friend curiously. Jiho had decided just two days ago that Min would have the intro part since she can speak English almost fluently and then Hyemi would take the verse right after. It also worked for Minseok’s choreography because Min could easily spin to switch places with the other rapper before going into the main dance.
“Yeah, but I want to be better,” Min easily responds back, giving them a smile before taking a quick look at the clock on the wall, “But Jae’s right. We should leave while it’s still somewhat early.”
“Early late or early early?” Hyemi lightly says, earning surprised laughs from her group mates. She shrugs as she gets up from her chair and stretches, making sure to turn everything off before walking between them to grab her bag from inside the practice room.
“It’s early either way,” Jaesun answers, making sure all their things were with them before turning off the lights and walking out the room to wait for Min and Hyemi. He eyes Jiwool who still looks like she has energy in her eyes. “This never-ending battery here still looks like she can go a couple more rounds of dancing.”
“Excuse you,” Jiwool retorts, lightly glaring at Jaesun and smacking him on the arm, “I would like my sleep too, thank you very much.”
The action has Jaesun laughing before he ushers the others out the door, looking around curiously before turning around to lock up the building. The others see his look as well before turning to see if there were any other people on the street. Hyemi and Jiwool are used to having to look out for creepy fans and paparazzi, but they’d think they wouldn’t have to worry about it right now.
In no time, they’re all walking towards the end of the street where they would have to part ways, and Min and Jaesun are repeating over and over again for Jiwool and Hyemi to text them when they finally get home.
It’s fifteen minutes past eight, and Seungheon is just arriving to the building, yelping when Jiwool suddenly throws a paper ball at his head. He frowns as he glares at her. “I spent thirty minutes on my hair. Don’t mess it up.”
“You’re late,” Jaesun simply says, already stretching to get ready for the day ahead.
Seungheon frowns in response, dropping his bag off to the side of the room where Hyemi’s and Sookhyun’s bags are, before going over to join the rest in stretching. Well, next to Sookhyun and Suhwan where they’re currently watching Jiwool help a sleepy Min in stretching so she probably doesn’t hurt herself with dancing later. He tilts his head in confusion when Min makes an uncomfortable face before trying to slap Jiwool’s hands off of her back behind her to make her stretch her legs on the floor where they’re spread apart.
When he sits down next to the other three, he grunts at the sudden force of a lapful of Sookhyun attaching himself to him. “Sookhyun,” he mumbles, trying to get the other off of him so he can stretch too, “Get off.”
“But I need my daily quota of skinship and I don’t want to scare Suhwan-hyung so early in the morning,” Sookhyun quietly says, both of them looking over to Suhwan who seems frozen in his spot of stretching his legs curiously watching Min and Jiwool’s antics while Jaesun and Hyemi talk to themselves at the other end of the room.
“But I need to stretch.”
“But my daily quota.”
“Sookhyun.”
“Hyung,” Sookhyun whines in return, smothering himself all over Seungheon and causing him to fall onto his back, “I can help you stretch like the noonas over there.”
“Sookhyun,” Seungheon almost whines, about to shove the boy off of him when he turns and sees Suhwan staring at them instead. He gives the other a bright smile. “Good morning, Suhwan.”
“Good morning, hyung.” Suhwan returns with a small smile, returning to stretching.
“Did you sleep well?”
The small smile doesn’t leave the boy’s face, and Seungheon’s pretty sure all the females in the room plus Jaesun squeal at his one word answer. “Yeah.”
Seungheon and Sookhyun laugh at the attitude and word of the other, causing Suhwan to blush at the sudden attention on him. He ducks his head while doing the butterfly stretching position and they continually wonder who’s the youngest between him and Sookhyun.
“Are you two going to cuddle all day?” Minseok suddenly asks when he enters the room thirty-five minutes late and scratching the back of his head. He looks just as sleepy as Min and its somewhat endearing when he yawns. “I forgot to tell you yesterday. We need to meet up at the gym down the street from now on every Sunday.”
“Sunday?” Jaesun asks back, sitting back up to look at him confused. “Today’s Saturday.”
Minseok stares at him before looking back to a comfortable-looking Seungheon and Sookhyun. “Oh,” he mumbles, brows furrowing in confusion, “Is it?”
“Yeah,” Hyemi pipes up, going over to pick her phone out of her bag to check the date. “It’s Saturday today.”
“Why do you need us to go to the gym?” Seungheon asks next, finally getting up after Sookhyun scrambles off of him, “Do we need to actually work out for our debut?”
“It’d be helpful,” Minseok answers back, sighing as he sits down against the wall next to the doorway, “But we need the place for their mats and paddings.”
“What are you talking about?” Min questions, moving to lie down on her back to stare at the ceiling, “We’re not literally going to do acrobatics for our debut stage, right?” There’s a moment of silence before they all hear a nervous chuckle and they’re all sitting up straight to stare at their choreographer shocked. “Wait,” Min mumbles, “I was kidding, Minseok. You’re not– Really?”
“Jiwool needs to learn how to tuck and flip and Jaesun needs to learn how to flip and basically be thrown into the air.”
“Excuse me?” both the dancers ask, looking at their instructor incredulously.
“Yeah, so,” Minseok says with a bright smile, getting up again to head out the door, “I already told Minkyung and Jiho I’d have all of you for the whole day because I thought it was Sunday… We might as well get started now.”
“Wait,” Jiwool says, looking to the rest of her group mates confused, “We’re what now?”
Suhwan is the first to get up to grab his stuff and follow after his teacher, looking at his friends confused before Sookhyun is quickly following after him. The other five stay in the room mildly confused with what is going on right then.
“Can I even flip?” Jiwool questions nobody in particular before looking to Min and then Jaesun, “I work out, but I don’t know if I’m capable of flipping?”
The others look to Jaesun too who eventually shrugs after a few quiet minutes. He gets up to get his stuff before waiting for the others to catch up with him. “Well, we might as well try, right?”
“I think it’ll be cool,” Min adds in, moving in to wrap her arm around Jiwool’s when they have their bags with them. She looks over her shoulder to see Hyemi and Seungheon following them as well. “But I don’t know how safe this is going to be at all.”
“That’s why we’re going to the gym and practicing on the mats,” Hyemi voices out with a shrug, “They do have high expectations for us anyways.”
Seungheon hums as they exit the building and other trainees enter it, watching them confused as they leave. He smiles as he sees Kisumi walk past them. “Well, it’ll be interesting either way. Maybe it’s just our dancers having to do these stunts.”
“That’d make sense,” Hyemi agrees, looking to Jiwool briefly before turning to watch Jaesun walk ahead of them. She briefly wonders if they’re going to get any injuries doing these stunts. It would be warranted but Jaesun is a soccer player – he can do basic flips, if anything – but Jiwool on the other hand, she isn’t so sure.
She frowns as she walks over to get her water bottle as Jaesun finally turns off the music. “Do you think we have it down?” she questions, completely out of breath as she watches her partner go for his bag as well to get his own water.
“I think as much as we can without the actual recording finished yet,” Jaesun responds back with a huff.
She nods as she looks around to see that it’s only the two of them left, Suhwan and Sookhyun leaving with the instructors two hours ago to make it home safely while Seungheon left an hour ago to go meet up with his cousin somewhere else entirely. But there are two bags left, and she was pretty sure Min left hours ago as well with Seungheon. “Aren’t we getting the demo later today?”
“Yeah,” Jaesun hums out.
When Jiwool looks over to him, she sees him staring at the two leftover bags as well. She sighs as she picks out her cell phone and is surprised to only see one missed call and two text messages from Kim Junmyeon. She frowns in confusion as she opens the text messages to see the words ‘I’m sorry’ and ‘Woolie-yah…’ The dumb nickname the man created for her makes her worry more about him.
She’s heard of the rumors about his father being a part of that pro-Japanese group, but it just didn’t make sense. For as long as she’s known Junmyeon, or well, Suho, which has been about four years or more now, she’s never known the man or his son to be anything in relation to that. Sure, they’ve never delved into the topic extensively, but all she knows about Junmyeon’s actions and interests involves collecting a bunch of manga and claiming to read ‘a bunch of novels’ because of it.
The sudden memory has her smiling the littlest bit until she actually remembers why she’s been avoiding the man for as long as she has. She lets out a little sigh before opening up her other two text messages from Chanyeol reading ‘we’re in japan, yooji!!!’ and ‘yooojiiiii how can you be asleep when we’re having a concert and you’re not even hereeee.’
“So,” Jaesun suddenly states and it causes Jiwool to jump at the abrupt sound, “Either it’s Chanyeol making you smile or the man you’ve been trying to avoid all throughout practice the last few days.”
Jiwool laughs at his choices, giving him a look before returning back to her phone and deciding whether to send a reply or not. It is 4:30 in the morning. “It’s Chanyeol,” she responds back with a smile, deciding against sending a text just so her best friend can sleep all he can if he is asleep right now.
“Ah,” Jaesun breathes out, smiling with her as he grabs his bag and gestures for her to do the same, “Come on. Text him when you get home. We’ve already stayed long enough and we have to be back in a couple of hours.”
“You’re right,” Jiwool answers back, slinging her own bag onto her shoulder and putting her cell phone in her pocket, “But what about Min’s and Hyemi’s stuff?”
“We’ll see what they’ve been doing all this time,” Jaesun says, turning off the lights to the practice room before walking the few feet to see Min practicing her rapping through the door with Hyemi monitoring her. He frowns, looking to Jiwool who’s looking just the same as he.
“Is it because she doesn’t want to go home again?” Jiwool questions quietly, watching as Min finishes and Hyemi pushes on the button for the intercom to talk to her in the recording room. They both look tired too.
“Isn’t it hard for you too?” Jaesun asks back, returning to just watching their friends through the glass window, “I never knew any of the EXO guys personally.”
Jiwool smiles sadly as she suddenly shoves Jaesun’s shoulder to get him to open the door and tell their friends to get going home. The unexpected action makes Jaesun trip and smack himself against the door, groaning when pain blossoms on his cheek. “It’s why I dance so hard and so late,” she replies just as Hyemi jumps in her seat and causes Min to jump in shock at the sudden loud screech that enters her ears at the noise.
“Jiwool,” Jaesun warns, gaining his balance again before turning to glare at her, “Are you trying to annoy me right now?”
“I don’t know,” Jiwool cheekily answers back, “Am I?”
Jaesun simply rolls his eyes before turning to wave at his friends inside the room. He gets two waves back before he opens the door to see what they’re up to. Behind him, Jiwool just smiles politely at Hyemi, following in Jaesun until she accidentally hits the doorknob with her side. She yelps at the sudden pain, stopping in her tracks to rub her side furtively.
“Are you okay?” Min questions as she rushes out of the room to her, “You have to be more careful, Jiwool.”
“Yeah, I know,” Jiwool mumbles back as she winces at the tenderness of the injury.
“What are you guys still doing here?” Jaesun asks, knowing Jiwool always has a tendency to be clumsy outside of the dance room, “You two should get home too. It’s going to be five soon and we need to be back here at eight to go over more of the choreography and work on the next song.”
“We were just practicing our title track,” Hyemi answers back, looking to Min briefly, “She wanted some help so I was helping her get the hang of the intro better.”
“But Jiho said you were already good at it, Min,” Jiwool says, looking to her friend curiously. Jiho had decided just two days ago that Min would have the intro part since she can speak English almost fluently and then Hyemi would take the verse right after. It also worked for Minseok’s choreography because Min could easily spin to switch places with the other rapper before going into the main dance.
“Yeah, but I want to be better,” Min easily responds back, giving them a smile before taking a quick look at the clock on the wall, “But Jae’s right. We should leave while it’s still somewhat early.”
“Early late or early early?” Hyemi lightly says, earning surprised laughs from her group mates. She shrugs as she gets up from her chair and stretches, making sure to turn everything off before walking between them to grab her bag from inside the practice room.
“It’s early either way,” Jaesun answers, making sure all their things were with them before turning off the lights and walking out the room to wait for Min and Hyemi. He eyes Jiwool who still looks like she has energy in her eyes. “This never-ending battery here still looks like she can go a couple more rounds of dancing.”
“Excuse you,” Jiwool retorts, lightly glaring at Jaesun and smacking him on the arm, “I would like my sleep too, thank you very much.”
The action has Jaesun laughing before he ushers the others out the door, looking around curiously before turning around to lock up the building. The others see his look as well before turning to see if there were any other people on the street. Hyemi and Jiwool are used to having to look out for creepy fans and paparazzi, but they’d think they wouldn’t have to worry about it right now.
In no time, they’re all walking towards the end of the street where they would have to part ways, and Min and Jaesun are repeating over and over again for Jiwool and Hyemi to text them when they finally get home.
It’s fifteen minutes past eight, and Seungheon is just arriving to the building, yelping when Jiwool suddenly throws a paper ball at his head. He frowns as he glares at her. “I spent thirty minutes on my hair. Don’t mess it up.”
“You’re late,” Jaesun simply says, already stretching to get ready for the day ahead.
Seungheon frowns in response, dropping his bag off to the side of the room where Hyemi’s and Sookhyun’s bags are, before going over to join the rest in stretching. Well, next to Sookhyun and Suhwan where they’re currently watching Jiwool help a sleepy Min in stretching so she probably doesn’t hurt herself with dancing later. He tilts his head in confusion when Min makes an uncomfortable face before trying to slap Jiwool’s hands off of her back behind her to make her stretch her legs on the floor where they’re spread apart.
When he sits down next to the other three, he grunts at the sudden force of a lapful of Sookhyun attaching himself to him. “Sookhyun,” he mumbles, trying to get the other off of him so he can stretch too, “Get off.”
“But I need my daily quota of skinship and I don’t want to scare Suhwan-hyung so early in the morning,” Sookhyun quietly says, both of them looking over to Suhwan who seems frozen in his spot of stretching his legs curiously watching Min and Jiwool’s antics while Jaesun and Hyemi talk to themselves at the other end of the room.
“But I need to stretch.”
“But my daily quota.”
“Sookhyun.”
“Hyung,” Sookhyun whines in return, smothering himself all over Seungheon and causing him to fall onto his back, “I can help you stretch like the noonas over there.”
“Sookhyun,” Seungheon almost whines, about to shove the boy off of him when he turns and sees Suhwan staring at them instead. He gives the other a bright smile. “Good morning, Suhwan.”
“Good morning, hyung.” Suhwan returns with a small smile, returning to stretching.
“Did you sleep well?”
The small smile doesn’t leave the boy’s face, and Seungheon’s pretty sure all the females in the room plus Jaesun squeal at his one word answer. “Yeah.”
Seungheon and Sookhyun laugh at the attitude and word of the other, causing Suhwan to blush at the sudden attention on him. He ducks his head while doing the butterfly stretching position and they continually wonder who’s the youngest between him and Sookhyun.
“Are you two going to cuddle all day?” Minseok suddenly asks when he enters the room thirty-five minutes late and scratching the back of his head. He looks just as sleepy as Min and its somewhat endearing when he yawns. “I forgot to tell you yesterday. We need to meet up at the gym down the street from now on every Sunday.”
“Sunday?” Jaesun asks back, sitting back up to look at him confused. “Today’s Saturday.”
Minseok stares at him before looking back to a comfortable-looking Seungheon and Sookhyun. “Oh,” he mumbles, brows furrowing in confusion, “Is it?”
“Yeah,” Hyemi pipes up, going over to pick her phone out of her bag to check the date. “It’s Saturday today.”
“Why do you need us to go to the gym?” Seungheon asks next, finally getting up after Sookhyun scrambles off of him, “Do we need to actually work out for our debut?”
“It’d be helpful,” Minseok answers back, sighing as he sits down against the wall next to the doorway, “But we need the place for their mats and paddings.”
“What are you talking about?” Min questions, moving to lie down on her back to stare at the ceiling, “We’re not literally going to do acrobatics for our debut stage, right?” There’s a moment of silence before they all hear a nervous chuckle and they’re all sitting up straight to stare at their choreographer shocked. “Wait,” Min mumbles, “I was kidding, Minseok. You’re not– Really?”
“Jiwool needs to learn how to tuck and flip and Jaesun needs to learn how to flip and basically be thrown into the air.”
“Excuse me?” both the dancers ask, looking at their instructor incredulously.
“Yeah, so,” Minseok says with a bright smile, getting up again to head out the door, “I already told Minkyung and Jiho I’d have all of you for the whole day because I thought it was Sunday… We might as well get started now.”
“Wait,” Jiwool says, looking to the rest of her group mates confused, “We’re what now?”
Suhwan is the first to get up to grab his stuff and follow after his teacher, looking at his friends confused before Sookhyun is quickly following after him. The other five stay in the room mildly confused with what is going on right then.
“Can I even flip?” Jiwool questions nobody in particular before looking to Min and then Jaesun, “I work out, but I don’t know if I’m capable of flipping?”
The others look to Jaesun too who eventually shrugs after a few quiet minutes. He gets up to get his stuff before waiting for the others to catch up with him. “Well, we might as well try, right?”
“I think it’ll be cool,” Min adds in, moving in to wrap her arm around Jiwool’s when they have their bags with them. She looks over her shoulder to see Hyemi and Seungheon following them as well. “But I don’t know how safe this is going to be at all.”
“That’s why we’re going to the gym and practicing on the mats,” Hyemi voices out with a shrug, “They do have high expectations for us anyways.”
Seungheon hums as they exit the building and other trainees enter it, watching them confused as they leave. He smiles as he sees Kisumi walk past them. “Well, it’ll be interesting either way. Maybe it’s just our dancers having to do these stunts.”
“That’d make sense,” Hyemi agrees, looking to Jiwool briefly before turning to watch Jaesun walk ahead of them. She briefly wonders if they’re going to get any injuries doing these stunts. It would be warranted but Jaesun is a soccer player – he can do basic flips, if anything – but Jiwool on the other hand, she isn’t so sure.
co-author's note: the second chapter! my note might not be very long cause i'm typing with one hand (i just had minor hand surgery last week so ;;) but i just wanted to let everyone know that each chapter will have all seven characters but will focus a bit more on one of them to know more about them and their backstory. uh, idk what else. keep an eye out on the newsfeed, etc.
question of the day: are any of your characters still in school? university? do they have any school friends?? if not, what do they do when they have breaks or days off away from the practice rooms?
ps. exo'luxion is killing me oh my god i'm in love like i'm sorry if there is a sudden influx of exo feels in the next chapter whenever i can type again because omfg i livestreamed their concerts so. cries.
updated: march 08, 2015
question of the day: are any of your characters still in school? university? do they have any school friends?? if not, what do they do when they have breaks or days off away from the practice rooms?
ps. exo'luxion is killing me oh my god i'm in love like i'm sorry if there is a sudden influx of exo feels in the next chapter whenever i can type again because omfg i livestreamed their concerts so. cries.
updated: march 08, 2015
created by -catalyst
〈 ♞ 〉i swear i'm going to spam this entire story with new chapters by september/october! ( 1 aug 2017 )
Comments